My findings as I live my crazy life.

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One of my older sisters came down today for the long weekend, and we were all making a bit of a plan for our trip to Vancouver next week for the concert. Next thing we knew, we were talking about how it’s the first time we are doing something together in a while. I mean I’ll hang out with my sisters, but usually its one at a time sort of thing.

My sister Phalon is pretty close to my age. She’s only a year older (except people constantly think that she’s younger than me). Then my next sister, Paige, is seven years older than me.

Somehow we got talking about some of the stunts that my sister Phalon and I got into when we were younger since we were so close in age.

When we were really young (I think I was going on 4 years old), and just moved to this town, I was playing outside in the dirt with my sister. My sister started telling me that I should eat some of the dirt. But being a smart almost 4 year old, I knew something was awry. So I inquired, “Why?”.

Her response to my question was something like, ” Well because all boys eat dirt!”

Of course being the much smarter, younger brother, I added, “But I never saw dad eating any dirt.”

Then came the trickery, and probably what scarred me to be the odd person I am today. My sister told me, “That’s because he does it at work with all the other boys that work there.”

So I ate dirt.

The moral of the story:

Girls are evil.

Sisters are evil.

I guess I was a little evil too as a child, but my sister was always right there by my side doing the same too. Heck, she probably egged half of it on like that dirt eating incident.

I remember our first neighbors when we moved here. They were always pretty nice at first, but after a couple of years, when I was about six or seven, they started being not very friendly to my parents. So as a result, my sister and I decided to get payback against them.

We always heard our parents talking about making their lawn greener than our neighbours too, so we decided to help them out as our first payback. So one day when our neighbours weren’t home, we took some of their bleach that they left outside and poured the entire bottle all over their front lawn. It was pretty genius of us too considering that those spots of their lawn were completely dead after some time. Then the same day, we also decided to clog their eaves, so we shoved every page from the newspaper into their eaves spout. I think we did that one because we sat there waiting about 2 minutes for their lawn to die, and when it didn’t die before our eyes, we wanted to make sure we made our point.

Over the months we tried to do more to get our revenge too.

During the fall time, they had these plants along the top of the fence, so we knocked every single of them down into their yard. During the winter we shovelled all of our snow from our back yard, into their driveway, and even made sure to get some doggy doo doo in with it too. Then in the spring, more specifically, at Easter, we got a bunch of gum from the Easter Bunny. So we chewed all of it, made a huge glob and wrapped it around the tree in their yard.

We were quite the deviants. I think those must have been the rebel days of our lives too. I kinda feel bad for our neighbours now, but I guess we could have done worse right? Besides, we were young and didn’t know any better from pouring bleach on the neighbours lawn.

“One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. ‘Which road do I take?’ she asked. ‘Where do you want to go?’ was his response. ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it doesn’t matter.” – Alice In Wonderland

Alright, I know Halloween is still a little more than two months away from now. But I already decided what I’m going to be. I made this decision the other day to fulfil a childhood dream I have always had.

Growing up I watched a little bit of television like most children. I didn’t watch all that much due to my wild imagination and inability to sit still, but there were a few shows that could grab my attention. Some of those were Pokemon, Power Rangers, Dragon Ball Z, Boy Meets World and of course Sailor Moon.

While watching Sailor Moon though, I got a bit of an attachment to Tuxedo Mask. He was such a suave and brilliant hero, that I wanted to be just like him! Plus I had a bit of a crush on Sailor Mars, so I figured I would be able to attract her by being Tuxedo Mask!

So this Halloween I’ve decided I’m going to put away a little bit of cash to get a really good and authentic Tuxedo Mask costume going. I’ve done some searching for the main dressage, so I’m looking at something over a hundred dollars. But that’s alright, to be one of my childhood heroes would be like those Mastercard priceless commercials. For me it would go like this:

University Tuition: $4000

Visiting San Francisco: $495

Tap Shoes: $114

Mr. Bert: $75

Tube of Toothpaste: $1.99

Becoming Tuxedo Mask for a day: F%$&ing Epically Priceless.

So I’m going all out, I’ll even buy a bunch of roses to throw at cute girls or something! Maybe I’ll even save the day or something really crazy like what the real Tuxedo Mask would do. AND I already know I can pull off the hair too!

It’s going to be a good Halloween this year I think, has anyone else decided this early what they are going to be? And don’t say your too old to dress up for Halloween, that’s bull poopy, life is meant to be enjoyed and filled with fun times.

Right now I’m looking into my fish tank at my turtle, Mr. Bert. He’s a pretty good pet, he’s pretty quite, easy to please, confined to his tank, and best of all, he’s a good listener. Actually, a lot of the time I catch myself saying hi to him when I walk into my room, or even fully talk to him sometimes. Oh well, I’m a bit of a loner this summer so I gotta talk to someone, even if its just my turtle!

We have other pets too: a dog, a cat, several fish, a couple newts. But All of them are more bonded to my other family members than myself, so that’s why Mr. Bert and I have a special relationship.

He’s not my first pet though, that was actually a hamster that I bought with my sister when we were kids.Her name was

My Hamster Molly On Her First Birthday

Molly, after the doll from the Big Comfy Couch, which was quite the hit show for us in those days. She was one of those kinds that was a splotchy orange with white mix.

It actually took us quite some time to save up for her, a few months actually. We were quite determined children, probably no more than 10 neither. But every time our parents came home from work or we had customers, we would ask if they had any pennies, nickles or dimes that we could have to add to our collection. Usually we could get some amount of money, and whenever we got a dollar or a Toonie, we got pretty excited. Heck, we even went as far as checking everyone’s shoes for pennies too.

Eventually we did end up filling this coffee tin that we used to hold all of change. Its actually kinda funny, we were trying to save for enough to get a ferret, we thought they were the cutest little animals ever. But I think once my parents realized we were serious and getting quite a bit of change, they managed to convince us to settle for a hamster. I’m sure they got quite relieved when we did fall for their new idea.

We even decided that we would name her Molly before we got her, and even decided the colour of the one we wanted.

Also, before we went to the pet store, my parents decided to trade us our tin of change for some bills, just to ensure that the cashier wouldn’t turn us away.

We had Molly for a good couple of years, where she built a lot of memories that are still infused within my childhood. Actually, when Molly had turned 1, we even threw her a birthday celebration, and with my mothers help, we baked a cake for her too. A carrot cake of course too, because she loved to munch on carrots.

Who knows what kind of animals I’ll own in the future, but I’m not sure any could bring as much fun and enjoyment as Molly had in my childhood. But you never really know.

“Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century” – Dame Edna Everage

While growing up, I had quite an insane but wonderful imagination that I shared with my best friend, Steve. We would constantly make new worlds and travel in between each one. We even created other specie races and had multiple personalities we transferred between. No, we weren’t crazy with some sort of multiple personality disorder, we just felt as though our creations needed more characters!

Our imagination really ran for a long time though, straight into our teenage years and sometimes still do, even though I’m turning 22 in October. But that’s alright, its nice to slip back into childhood once in a while, right?

Most of our different personalities were just different forms of our names. When we were ourselves, it was Steve and Tyson. When we were the villains it was Stevaha and Tysonee. When we were the brilliant scientists/inventors it was Evets and Nosyt. We even had a crazy person personality (not like we really needed it) from the land of Dalmatia, named Stiv and Tajson.

Our most common playground was always behind our houses.

Steve became my next door neighbour partway through our friendship and we had this mountain that started right behind our houses. We would constantly climb up there and turn it into whatever world we wanted to.

One of the times we were going up my dad was building a new fence, so he had all these boards from our old fence that were still perfectly good. We took the boards up with us, a few at a time. Just brining all that wood basically took an entire day. But once up there, we managed to scrounge up all the old but still usable nails that were pulled out of those boards and got to work building ourselves a fort.

Of course, knowing us, our old fence was pink, so we were going to have a very manly, pink fort!

There was this one area up on that hill that was kinda like a valley, on either side of us were pretty steep banks. This place, we called Oojaboojan valley. It was where the mythical Oojaboojans lived.

The Oojaboojans were a race that Steve and I made up and stuck with for many many years, even making up a call for them and a special Oojaboojan language.

Ultimately, we decided to build our fort just at the entrance of the Oojaboojan valley, that way we would still be outside of it, and the hostile Oojaboojans wouldn’t attack us.

It took us about a week, but we eventually had our beautiful pink fort built. We used a fallen tree as an anchor point to get started, giving us a sturdy beam to build the roof upon. We even built ourselves a bench and made the roof waterproof with a yellow tarp. Plus, we also a added a fence for defence, in case the Oojaboojans did decide to attack us. All in all, we had a wicked pink fort with a yellow roof. It was pretty big area-wise, but we had to duck down a little when we were inside of it. Even still, it was our haven and we were very proud of what we accomplished. Sometimes it even served as our headquarters when we spied on the cute girl that lived on the other side of our houses.

Eventually our fun had to end though. The cute girl that lived in our neighbourhood moved away with her parents and the town began developing log homes on that mountain where our fort was. So yes, they destroyed our fort and ran the Oojaboojans out of their valley for their purposes.

But that didn’t keep us off the mountain. We still climbed up there, but hiked further and went on more outrageous adventures to the mountain peaks. The mountain was formed with three peaks, each fairly close, so we could hike to all of them in one day if we wanted to (and sometimes we did). Each peak had its own name, there was Death Peak, named by its many cliffs that surrounded it, making only one way possible to get up there. Not to mention everything on that peak was dead due to a forest fire. There was also Abporson’s Palace as one of the peaks, it housed an ancient kingdom that could only be seen once on the highest point of that peak. Then there was the largest and highest of the three, entitled The Neverending Mountain. All of these peaks were always dangerous to us. Since the Oojaboojans were driven from their home, they had scattered throughout each of the peaks, and we had constantly undergone many epic battles on our journeys.

Most kids do have an imagination to some degree, but from what I observed as a kid, I think Steve and I took ours a lot further than most other kids. When we describe some of the games we used to play and everything we made up, people would give us some crazy looks. Plus, when we hung around with many other kids, they were never quite as inventive as we were. They always based things off of movies or television shows they had watched, but we were never interested in copying what was already made up. But I’m sure there were some kids just as crazy as we had been.

“I am imagination. I can see what the eyes cannot see. I can hear what the ears cannot hear. I can feel what the heart cannot feel” – Peter Nivio Zarlenga

I’ve been single since last summer, which has been fine with me since I’ve been pretty busy with school, living out of town, plus everything happening at home. Although since then, I have managed to squeeze in a couple dates here a and there as well. I will admit though, this summer I wish I lived somewhere with a bit more population, especially around my age, it would make my summer slightly more enjoyable and actually give me people to hang out with. But that’s not really what this post is about. Its about the type of girls I seem to attract and the ones that ask me out.

The title really says it all, most of the girls that get huge crushes or ask me out are the kids or the crazies! I don’t understand it, but that’s what it seems like for me. Maybe I have some sort of built in maniac magnet? Whatever it might be though, always makes for an awkward or interesting situation.

I figure that the best way to demonstrate this, would be to give a couple examples of the girls that have taken an interest in me. So here they are, in all their glory.

Marlene:

Marlene is a young lady that was friends with another girl that I hung out with from time to time. So needless to say, I saw her on a semi-often basis. I didn’t mind if she was around though because she was fairly quiet and didn’t bother us too much, but did give her two cents every once in a while.

A while ago though, my town had a community clean up event going, called the “Trash Bash”, where volunteers go around town and pick up any garbage that they find. Of course being such a small town, Marlene was there as well, and of course with my luck, the event organizer partnered her with me. But that was alright at the time, I didn’t really want to be with one of the old people that would go really slow. Plus I already knew Marlene so it limited the “getting to know small talk” that I hate so much.

During the Trash Bash, I was just being my silly self and of course cracked a lot of jokes and made Marlene laugh lots. So yes, I probably did have it coming, but who knew a girl almost half my age would be compelled to express that she liked me?

Yes, at the time I was 21 and she was 13. “Almost 14”, as she would say.

But at the end of the Trash Bash we packed everything up and returned our garbage sticks to the organizers. Then before I jumped in my car to leave, Marlene ran up to me… I figured she was going to ask for a ride or something, but boy, did she ever catch me off guard! I gotta give her an A for effort though and it was rather cute too.

She said, “I know your a bit older than me and going to college and everything”. Where I nodded and agreed, except its more like a LOT older than you and going to university… She continued saying, “but I really like you and was hoping that you would be my boyfriend?”. That’s where she really caught me off guard. I had no idea what to tell her and stumbled around a few opening words while hurrying to try and find something to say to let her down nicely. So I finally managed to get out something along the lines that she was right, she’s a lot younger than me and I’m too busy to have girlfriend so I didn’t think it was good idea.

The whole thing felt so awkward though and I felt like stabbing my eyeballs out the whole time.

Luckily she got the message, but once she turned 14, she decided to get a job where I work. So I guess she’s one of those people that you just can’t escape in a small town! So it feels a little awkward sometimes at work, even though she hasn’t bothered me anymore.

Natalie:

Natalie is an interesting one to say the least. I didn’t really have a choice of meeting her neither because at the start of the winter semester she was in my Chemistry class and sat beside me saying, “I will now be your friend and you will eventually come to terms with that”. So I guess we are friends, she’s very entertaining so I’m alright with that, in moderation though. But it gets better, later in the day I ended up having my Cell Biology class with her as well. So there was no escaping, she sat beside me there too, forcing our friendship the entire time.

After a while though, I found out why she was so weird. In one of our seminars for Cell Biology I was eating a puff wheat square for lunch, so Natalie decided to tell me all about how she tried to make them once when she was staying at a halfway house for the mentally insane.

For those that don’t know, a halfway house for the mentally insane is basically where crazy people go before getting integrated back into society.

Natalie is kinda creepy though, she always seems to know things that occur in my life before I even tell her. I do have her on Facebook, so that would explain it, except that I have her on a limited profile where she can’t see all that much… Also there’s this other Natalie in our class, so she makes a habit of stalking her and getting to know her without actually talking to her.

I have managed to escape getting asked out from Natalie, except she’s hinted quite a lot and is always touching my arms and trying to give me hugs. Usually I’m ok with that, I’m a very touchy person, but the way she does it makes it feel so weird and wrong. I’m not sure if its her cold and clammy hands or how she does it, but it gives me the chills.

I have managed to escape her some during the summer, but she warned me on Facebook last week that she’s super clingy and I should expect a huge tackle hug from her on the first day back.

So that’s only two examples, but there are more believe it or not. There’s Shelby from Physics, who likes to scratch her elbow and cackle at herself because of it. There’s also Darby, who’s incredibly young yet always hits on me in the weirdest ways. Hopefully I’ll start getting a little better luck with the type of girls that like me soon.

“Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit they are crazy” – Nora Ephron

During my childhood and part of my teenage years, I was fortunate enough to attend a summer camp five times. Every one that I went to is infused in my brain forever and stand out as some of the most fun and memorable moments of my life. So I think if a parent gets a chance or wonders if they should send their kid to summer camp, they should most definitely research one close by (or not necessarily close) and send their kid without hesitation. The skills, memories and friends they come home with, stay with them forever. Childhood memories are something I would never want to lose or replace with anything.

The first time I went to a summer camp was when I was about 10. I went to Sunnybrae Bible Camp, located along the incredible shores of Shuswap lake and at the base of the pristine Mount Bastion. It was a beautiful camp with really expert staff, and perfectly executed activities and plans. They definitely had the experience and the resources necessary to give kids the best of time while there.

At Sunnybrae, they have tonnes of activities to choose from to make for a new experience all the time, such things ranging from archery, to swimming, to learning a little more about the bible and religion. All of their camps for kids are a week long and cost $235 + British Columbia’s HST tax. But it isn’t just limited to kids, they have teen and family packs as well. Also, even if your kid isn’t raised with a religion (much like myself), I think its still a great opportunity in their development. At Bible camp, they don’t push religion onto anyone. I just think its just a great way to introduce the Bible to kids and a little of the western religious history. It’s an important part of the worlds development and culture, so I think its a little incompetent to not be at least be a little familiar with the Bible and religion.

The other four years that I went to a summer camp, were spend at the Vernon Army Cadet Summer Training Center (VACSTC). I was in cadets for seven years, from the time I was 12 until I aged out at 19.

When I was 14, I went to VACSTC for the first time doing a Cadet Leader course that lasted six weeks, then the year after that I did a Cadet Leader Instructor summer camp course in one of the prestigious Drill and Ceremonial platoons for another six weeks. During both of those years I had an amazing time, learned tonnes of new skills and made plenty new friends that I’m still friends with today.

While attending VACSTC there are a number of different camps to attend that are specialized for different purposes like music, drill, shooting, and athletics. With those camps come a series of lessons as well, based on the different types of camp you choose to go to. Besides the lesson, there are a tonne of fun activities included in each; things like absailing, beach days, water slides, sports nights and even looking at some of the local tourist attractions in and around Vernon, British Columbia. This camp is free, paid for by the Department of National Defence. But your kid actually gets a bonus for going, not much though, just $60 per week spent at camp and you have to be in cadets to be able to attend. But the memories and bonds that you make at Cadet camp are those in which you keep forever.

Myself and Two Other Staff Serving As Flag Party

Lastly, I also spent another 2 consecutive years at VACSTC. I had such an amazing time every time I went, that I wanted to return, but this time as staff. For the first year I was the high ranked warrant officer for the Rifle Coach platoon, specializing in familiarization with several different rifles. The next year I was again a Warrant officer, but this time for a platoon in Drill and Ceremonial. As a leader and staff, I was in charge of about 30 kids with one or two other platoon warrants at my side. We were in charge of their safety, supervision, fun and we were the ones that passed on the commands to them.

Since I was staff, it was a paid position (quite generously, I might add) under a seven week contract. The first week there is spent meeting the other staff and getting a rundown of what we would be doing with the kids for the last six weeks and going over the rules.

Even to this day I still make time to go and visit some of my friends from camp, as well as visit some of the kids that I taught while staffing there. Just before my roadtrip I went and visit with one of the kids I taught that lives in Vancouver, but in August I’m also going to visit some friends I staffed with in the place where it started, Vernon, BC. I honestly can’t wait to see them and I think if any parent gets the chance, they should send their kid to summer camp. It gets them out of the way for a little so the parent can relax for a bit of the summer themselves, but it also lets their kid explore different aspects of the world, learn tonnes of new skills, and come home with a million new friends. All-in-all, summer camp is amazing.

“To see the Summer Sky
Is Poetry, though never in a Book it lie –
True Poems flee” – Emily Dickinson